


HACK

by FroldGapp



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: F/M, Friendship, Friendship/Love, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Keith & Pidge | Katie Holt Friendship, Kidge - Freeform, Protective Keith (Voltron), Sassy Pidge | Katie Holt, hurt pidge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-02
Updated: 2018-03-02
Packaged: 2019-03-26 02:18:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13848006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FroldGapp/pseuds/FroldGapp
Summary: It was a standard mission. She'd done it a hundred times before, but this time the galra were ready.But, as always, so was Keith.





	HACK

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted as ch 2 of my Kidge fic Patterns | Lies, but was too divergent from my original plot. So here it is as a drabble instead!

When she was younger, she was embarrassed by her smallness; hated how her short fingers struggled to key in the commands on her brother’s computer. She’d follow her piano teacher’s fingers as they danced over the keys, straining her own until they were stiff with the effort.

As time moved on, she learned to build things for herself. She shaped the world to her size: Tidy devices that outpaced Matt’s clunky hardware, synthesisers she could trigger single-handedly. She bought hats from the kids’ section and wore her dad’s old sweaters with a belt as dresses.

And there was the occasional mission where her smallness was quite useful. When she had to squirrel her way in somewhere to work her techie magic. And it was good. She felt good in those moments of utility; when Shiro clapped her on the shoulder and Lance whisked her up into a rib-breakingly bouncy twirl. It was good until it all went sour.

A Galra cruiser and another infiltration mission. Hunk and Lance at the door; Shiro and Keith flanking her as she grumbled and mumbled her way along, kneeling with a screwdriver clenched between her teeth. She was shoulder deep behind circuit casing when her small fingers caught the transformer. She pulled. The lights shunted from white to red. She gasped, hearing the trap mechanism whizz within the darkness. She had a moment to catch Keith’s horrified eyes before a cold hardness slammed down on her knuckles. She pulled her hand from the hole. It came away too easy.

The others were yelling. Shots began hammering against the closed doors. Shiro was calling for extraction. Pidge spun away from the hole, hand light–light–too light.

‘Don’t look! Don’t look!’ Keith was saying, suddenly surrounding her–crowding her with a chestplate already streaked with blood. He caught her hand in his own and squeezed, pulling her towards him with his other hand. ‘Don’t look,’ he repeated, lips pressed tightly against her ear.

Pidge opened her mouth to say something but a scream tore the air in front of her instead. He scrabbled to hold her, while the room descended into chaos around them. With her good hand, she struck at him–hard–in the face. He grunted and renewed his grasp.

‘Why, why, why…’ she yelled. Striking him again and again: his cheek, his ear, his neck.

He held fast. ‘We’ll fix it,’ he said. ‘It’s going to be okay. It’s all going to be okay.’

OoO

Later, when she stumbled from the healing pod, he was there. He dropped his half-empty juice box, catching her easily with one arm.

‘Hey, pigeon,’ he said. ‘Still can’t fly.’

‘Oh, bite me,’ she returned, extracting herself from his hold.

She noted the deep bruising at the corner of his mouth and a savage scratch that ran from temple to jawline.

She made a face and scuffed her heel on the floor. ‘Was that me?’

Keith shrugged, meeting her eye with something like resigned humour.

‘You were trying to help me. Why’d you let me hit you like that?’

Another shrug, followed by a shy laugh that choked into a cough. ‘I don’t know,’ he mumbled. ‘Figured it made you feel better.’

‘Keith…’

He dug his toe into the ground and refused to meet her eye. ‘I can take it.’

‘That’s not the p–oh!’ With his free hand, he guided her own up for inspection. It had fully mended. All digits: present and accounted for. He pouted, turned his head this way and that like a confused dog as he surveyed the good work of the healing pod.

‘Huh,’ he said at last.

‘What?’ Pidge complained, pulling her hand from between his cool fingers.

He took a breath to speak, then thought better of it and swallowed it down with an audible gulp.

_ ‘What?’  _ Pidge whined, butting him with her shoulder.

He shoved her back as they strolled towards the door to the med-bay where Coran was waiting for a full check-up, she was sure.

‘It was real gross,’ Keith said. ‘Watching it mend, I mean. Like silly putty being squeezed out of a garden hose. Five of ‘em.’ Like this, he took his forefinger and poked it through a circle he made with the fingers of his other hand.

‘Oh my God, Keith!’ Pidge yelled, feeling her blood and that of all her ancestors rush to her face. She charged toward the med-bay with her head in her hands.

‘What?’ Keith called, following her. ‘What’d I do?’

**Author's Note:**

> Get at me: https://froldgapp.tumblr.com


End file.
